Offbeat Eats

One of my more established traditions of our annual trip to Lake George is getting up early one morning and hiking from downtown Lake George up to Prospect Mountain via the Prospect Mountain Trail that approximately follows the old incline railway route. After arriving back at the trailhead in late morning, we almost always follow it with another tradition: eating at Lake George’s The Breakfast Spot.

I’ve previously noted in my Lake George area reviews that there are almost uncountably many places to get breakfast in Lake George, but the quality is hit and miss, the prices are tourist-level, and sometimes it’s just nice to get a fresh view. Luckily, the Glens Falls area, about 15 minutes south of Lake George, is a lot quieter than Lake George, but it’s got a lot going for it. A nice, fairly vibrant downtown. Two breweries. A decent art musuem. And a good number of cheap, affordable restaurants. One that we had been driving by a lot in the last few years, just down the street from Common Roots, is the Peppermill Family Restaurant.

Way back in 2008, in the early days of Offbeat Eats, we visited Robie’s Country Store. It was a particularly good and lavish breakfast, but in the years following that visit, the store started to struggle, the breakfasts weren’t as good, and while Robie’s Country Store stayed open, the food counter closed. A replacement store, Roots Community Table at Robies, was good, but also closed a few years ago. But then I got notice in January this year that a big shift had happened. The Robie family of Hooksett (which operated the General Store since the 1800s) was actually related to the Robies of the Robie Farm in Piermont, NH, which are pretty well known in the region for their farm-raised meats (it’s pretty common around NH and VT to see “Robie Farms” meats on high-end restaurant menus, and at the various consumer coops). They had refurbished the place, and re-opened as The Robie Store, a specialty product store, cafe serving breakfast and lunch, and a butcher shop providing farm fresh meats straight from the farm in Piermont.

After a weekend of doing the Cabane à Sucre and visiting several delightful breweries and beer bars around Montreal, it was time to head home, stopping off in Le Plateau for a brunch. We used to go a lot to Lawrence for this, but Lawrence has retooled their concept and menu and isn’t much of a brunch spot any more. And another former area favorite of ours, Universel, moved and isn’t convenient anymore. But just around the corner from Lawrence is another spot known for brunch, Fabergé, that our friends Rick and Sarah had gotten as a recommendation, so we all headed off there for a proper sendoff breakfast.

Before heading out on our 50+ mile backpacking trip mid-day, we decided to do one more walking tour of downtown Little Rock and get breakfast. Downtown Little Rock’s Main Street has been through a few economic downturns, but a good stretch of it has been nicely reinvigorated as a restaurant row, with the 300 block in particular hosting a half dozen restaurants. One of these was our destination, Big Bad Breakfast.

One of the nice things about visiting my childhood home in Mesa, AZ is that there almost uncountably many good places with a 10 minute drive to score a really good Mexican breakfast (you can see my previous reviews of Amada’s in Mesa and Salazar Bros. in Tempe, for example). But I really like to mix it up and try new places when I can, so when we recently found ourselves heading down to downtown Chandler for a trip to Peixoto, we decided to check out another place on my potential breakfast burrito hit list: Taqueria Mi Casita.

As I mentioned in last Fall’s review of The Dinner Table in Swanzey, NH, we’re often traveling down I-91 to southern VT, western MA, or CT for some of our hiking. While a scenic drive, much of I-91 in Vermont isn’t that rich in dining options, especially around breakfast, but we’ve been trying to branch out a bit and try a few more places. A recent trip to hike Mount Holyoke in Hadley, MA led us to stopping off in Westminster, VT (a small town just south of the better-known Bellows Falls) to check out Father’s Restaurant.

I recently had a short business trip that involved both dropping equipment off in Haverhill, MA and then driving up for a tour of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS) Space Science Center at University of New Hampshire (which was excellent). This ended up having me driving through parts of New Hampshire’s Seacoast region at breakfast time, which is quite unusual for my travels. Looking at the various dining options, I decided I’d take a back route to Durham via the small town of Greenland, NH, and stop in and check out one of the area’s breakfast spots: Country View Restaurant.

As I mentioned in my review of Jame, having aerospace clients generally means a lot of trips to El Segundo, CA, and nearby Manhattan Beach. While these trips come in waves (I’ll find myself going 4x a year some years, and not at all others), it’s still given me a chance to come up with a few favorites, like Uncle Bill’s Pancake House, which I originally reviewed way back in 2008. This trip I had a nice, free morning, so after a nice 6 miles hike down the coastline, I met up with my friend Tanya to revisit my favorite breakfast spot in the area.

Welcome to another of Offbeat Eats’ Health Check reviews, where we re-visit old favorites and check out how they are doing. In this case, a recent trip to visit the Wentworth Greenhouse Farmers Market, which actually had us passing through north Concord’s “Fisherville” neighborhood. This gave us a great opportunity to check up on an old favorite, The Post.